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The Building State Capability (BSC) program at Harvard’s Center for International Development uses the Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) approach to build the capability of organizations to execute and implement.

Tag: PDIA

Almost every time I give a presentation on PDIA (and I have given many), I hear excuses about why PDIA cannot be done in development. So, I’ve decided to set the record straight. I am writing a blog post and drawing a picture for each of the four most common excuses I hear. This is the first one.

Excuse 1: International development experts often tell me that they cannot do PDIA because they have to produce projects and project processes don’t allow the flexibility implied in PDIA.

This is simply not true. Every development agency I know of, has traditional project mechanisms that are rigid and foster disciplined process BUT every development agency also has instruments that allow experimentation and flexibility. The names of these instruments differ but common tools have (over time) included trust funds, learning and innovation loans, adaptable projects, and even some results based loans.

So, development experts can find tools to do flexible problem identification and active project design and implementation IF THEY KNOW THESE ALTERNATIVES EXIST AND TAKE THE EFFORT TO USE THEM. If they choose not to use these alternatives because they are risky, or hard, or different, that is one thing. But experts should stop saying that these alternatives do not exist. If you want an example, read the PDIA in Cameroon blog post.

The TACD story is all too familiar. It became effective one year later than expected, had only disbursed 10% after two years of implementation, and despite high level management attention and discussions with the country leadership, little changed. A mutual decision was taken to close the TACD one year prior to its close date citing poor coordination, lack of organization skills, systems in need of upgrading, and a lack of political commitment among the reasons.

The second is a ‘pockets’ of effectiveness story. The Director General of Customs requested assistance from the World Bank, to help improve performance management. The project was funded by a grant and was limited to knowledge transfer and technical assistance. In order to design the project, the team used the Bank’s in-house expertise coupled with that of a customs officer who had institutional knowledge of customs issues and understood the context as he had been an adviser to Cameroon. The pilot began with performance contracts in 2 offices for 6 months. It was focused on non-financial incentives. For good performance, congratulatory letters were placed in the files and publicly disseminated for wider recognition, and for bad behavior, team interviews, warnings, possible disciplinary action as well as removal from their position. In less than 2 months the clearance process was much faster, the attitude of the customs officers improved and revenues increased. An additional $16.5 million in revenue had been collected over the 6 months.

The second story is also a great example of PDIA principles in action.

Problem Driven: The problem was identified and nominated by the country. The focus was on solving problems as opposed to retro-fitting solutions. This also helps build ownership.

Try, Learn, Iterate, Adapt: The size and flexibility of the pilot allowed them to experiment. The tight feedback loops built-in to track the pilot allowed them to learn and adapt. They also built trust and credibility by imposing sanctions and rewarding performance.

Create/Maintain Authorizing Environment: The gradual buy-in of a key number of agents below the head of customs helped keep the pilot on track. This idea of multi-agent leadership is discussed in Matt Andrew’s recent paper Who Really Leads Development?

The authors conclude “the experience suggests that with institutional reforms, implementing a series of small well-designed changes may hold more hope for behavioral change than a large but ineffective reform that presumes the capacity for internal leadership of a complex reform.’ In reality, development projects involve people, who are the ultimate complex phenomena, embedded in organizations, which are complex, and organizations are embedded in rules systems (e.g. institutions, cultures, norms), which are themselves complex.

Earlier today, Lant Pritchett, Michael Woolcock, and Frauke de Weijer were on a panel for the Fragility and Aid: What Works? event held by the UNU-WIDER at the Permanent Mission of Germany to the UN. They discussed how even well-meaning attempts to “build capacity” could serve as techniques of persistent failure because of isomorphic mimicry (emphasis on form over function) which allows for continued dysfunction, and premature load bearing (too much too soon) which builds mistrust and cynicism whereby the donor decides on what needs to be done, but the country gets blamed for the failure, setting off a vicious cycle of bad institutions. They also discussed how PDIA might be used in fragile states.

Yesterday, we hosted a one-day workshop entitled, Untying Development: Promoting Governance and Government with Impact. The day brought together different voices to discuss the challenge of creating a governance agenda that focuses on solving country-specific problems, involves local people through flexible and context-fitted processes, and emphasizes learning in the reform process.

In the first session, Francis Fukuyama highlighted the need for public administration programs to shift the focus from management back to implementation. He stressed the need for more granular governance indicators and better ways to measure the implementation of government public services. The second and third sessions were focused on unleashing local agents for change, and on new practice in action. In the fourth and final session on useful evaluation, Bob Klitgaard spoke about kindling creative problem solving by using a combination of theory and examples that are Specific, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional and Stories (the acronym SUCCES in Made to Stick). The agenda as well as the videos of the sessions can be found here.